720p

It seems rare, these days, that Apple could surprise people when it comes to products, especially in the area of television. With all the talk surrounding Apple TVs, Apple’s potential HDTV, and Apple’s standings in the content arena, it is interesting to see that Apple has released a new Apple TV, model A1469, to the FCC yesterday. Though there is no immense news released in this filing, it is exciting to have a confirmation that Apple is still working on TV solutions, an area of its “intense interest.” The industry has been waiting on bated breath to discover what is next for Apple in this area. Perhaps, Apple is getting ready to tell us.

Apple today unveiled the developer preview of Mountain Lion, a new version of Mac OS X that includes new features like Notification Center, Messages, Game Center, Notes, Reminders and Twitter. But the coolest feature of Mountain Lion is undoubtedly AirPlay Mirroring that lets you stream what’s on your Mac to your HDTV via Apple TV 2.

With AirPlay Mirroring built into Mac OS, you will be able to stream whatever is on your desktop – webpages, photos, videos, presentation – directly to your HDTV, with only one click on an AirPlay icon on the OS X menu bar.

Little by little the apps are coming to the Apple TV. Hacker and iOS developer Steven Troughton-Smith and a hacker called TheMudKip have made it to run iPhone and iPad apps on an Apple TV 2, jailbroken with Seas0nPass. Using @TheMudkip’s MobileX window manager for iOS, and @chpwn’s MobileLaunchpad launcher to go with it, they managed to get multiple iOS apps running natively on Apple TV, without AirPlay. Later on, they even figured out a way to run iPad applications at a full 720p resolution.

There are apps in the App Store that can do similar things (e.g. IMDb, Fandango), but Showreel is claimed to be the first AirPlay-enabled app that lets you watch full length HD movie trailers on Apple TV 2. Although the developer promises to “showcase nothing but the latest and greatest movies”, the movies are, well, not the latest releases and the collection is still quite small. On a good side, trailers are updated weekly, there are no ads and pre-trailer commercials, and the browsing experience on iPad as well as viewing trailers on the big screen in 720p is great. The app is iPad only.